hi Jim
I just used my bench grinder with a coarse wheel, it didn't take that long, had great control of the depth, etc. and didn't stink up the shop with the smell of burning rubber, thats always a bonus! as you can tell by the picture I went to just exposing the reinforcement and stopped right there not to weaken the belt. I think the more overlap the better, so mine is 8 inchs of the reinforced area then one inch of taper on each end. I was going to use the different types of rubber glue but I needed to get something that dried quickly at the time. we have some of the tire patch glue that you can burn and gets real sticky, thats going to be my next victom in this process. really let us know how the weather strip adheasive works we have a bunch at our shop but I would wait 24 hours before putting tension on it. good luck Jim!

Jim, I agree. It makes sense that you would want most of the cords intact on both ends of the lap joint, since the cords are what give the belt its tensile strength. Otherwise, you'd have a serious weak spot at the glue joint.

Well, I must say the bench grinder make short
work of the belt material. And it was tolerably
easy to stop at the cords, on both sides.

The trim adhesive may or may not be doing the
job - I expected it to set up rapidly - but it
was gooey for five minutes at least. I finaly
grabbed a clamp to keep it from coming apart,
and went and got my leather belt gluing jig
(shallow one inch wide grooves in aluminum
angle iron) and clamped it up the way I do
leather belts. I'll give it the "all night long
in the dark basement" treatment and report on the
outcome in the morning.

I have enough for another try if it doesn't work,
even if the glue won't come off.

I would say that the nitrile gloves were a
must-have here. Aside from the chemical issue,
that stuff was as sticky as baby $hit on a wool
blanket!

I'd say there is an oportunity for some money to be made here. I don't trust myself grinding the belt. I just know I'd bugger up the $20.00 belt. Now if some sharp cookie could came up with a jig to grind the belt?? I think I'd buy it!

Preliminary results look good. I was pretty
apprensive that the glue would not set up, it
was so gooey. But it set up quite hard, but
still somewhat flexible. My other worry (that
it would bond the belt to the aluminum angle
I was using to align things with) did not come
to pass. I had wiped most of the stuff off the
exterior.

The belt sure does grip more than the leather
I was using. On the highest range, the small
motor I have is barely able to get out of start
mode, whereas before there was enough slip
in the drive to let this happen right away.

At this point I have a leather belt from motor
to countershaft, and the gates belt between the
c/shaft and the headstock. I am positive if I
replaced the motor one as well, the motor would
simply not go into run mode at all.

Today I will pick up another belt and some more
adhesive, with the 10L in mind.

sounds like your doing great so far! glueing it together is a really a messy operation, see I wasn't joking about the gloves. any thinner or carb cleaner will clean up the mess, but watch around your belt. I have a 1/2 horse on my nine and a 1 h.p. 3 phase on my heavy 10 now I can use all the power and I don't have to stop to reset the belt on the pulley's. seemed like every time I got into a good cut I would have the belt go off the pulley. I haven't had one single incident but now I can actually break tooling and thats my fault and can deal with that lets hear the progress reports and how its working out for you.

Wax, or I think in my case I was saved by
the fact I store the fixtures in the cabinet
of my 10L, and they seem to pick up a bit
of oil. So while they stuck a bit, I was
able to get them loose without too much trouble.

My other problem was the belt I bought was
24 mm (which gates translates into 15/16 which
allowed a mm of side play, so the glue-up was
a teeny bit offset.

The next belt is 25 mm so that should be less
of a problem. I may try to scare up some
teflon-loaded delrin to make a new fixture from.

I forgot to add btw that I decided (seeing as
this was really only a test) to do the lap
joint shorter than suggested. On the one I did,
it's only about 1.5 inches long. The trim
adhesive seems to work very well.

Not too good. While it continues to work
well on the cataract bench lathe, the splice
I put on the 10L lasted about 30 seconds on
the lowest speed, whereupon I shifted it to
the middle step. It failed about 10 seconds
after that.

Inspection of the break revealed the adhesive
seemed not to have bonded to the exposed cord
layers at all. I think on this one, it was
only the ends that were really bonded, where
there was rubber-to-rubber contact.

Rather than try to re-work the belt to give
contact area without cords (it did wind up a
bit on the long side, so this could be done)
I chose for the fun of it to try the second
choice adhesive, permatex superglue gell.

I cleaned the surfaces with a bit of alcohol
and found that the superglue does indeed tack
up pretty fast, even before I could get the
clamp fixture on it.

I did clamp it up after that, and am waiting for
some time before trying it out. If it lets loose
I suppose I could try the leather belt cement,
or maybe some other kind of contact cement.

The other interesting result that occured when
I was trying to figure out which way the splice
should run, was that I had closely inspected
the existing leather belt on the bench lathe.

I alway remind myself which way those splices
are supposed to run because the factory splices
go in one direction, and they say on the belt
which way that's supposed to be. So I always
replicate that.

But when I went to set it up on the 10L the
other night, I realized that I had made the
splice on the existing leather belt
the wrong way around. Or so I thought.

Close inspection revealed I had made the splice
the right way. But mounted the belt inside out,
with the smooth side *away* from the pulley.
Grr. That may account for why the belt's always
been a bit "slipply" over the years.

Jim, I never like weather strip adheasive we run a vehicle building and repair business and use that stuff all the time and cant get it to bond well with the static glueing of weather strip material to a vehicle. I really feel the my next experiment is going to be the flamable tire patch glue. there is some good atributes it has with flexing and holding power, still after 30 years of doing this I yet to see a patch that has come off if done properly. my belt on the heavy 10 is still working perfect with the glue for all plastics, Iam really suprised at the holding power and the flexabilty of this product so far.

Long term success with Barge cement, weatherstrip glue, rubber cement, etc. doesen't seem likely to me. I think the trick to preserving the tensile strength of the joint is to make sure a sufficient length of the cord from each end is in contact in the joint. And since the cords are usually polyester (or similar) you really need to use a more "high-tech" type of glue to get a strong bond, like the glue-for-all-plastics (or some other type of catalyzed, or cyanoacrylate adhesive).

I'm not speaking from any direct experience here, but that's how it seems to me.

Ok, I'm really stretching my memory banks here, but I believe if you search the archives, Evan posted that he used a Loctite brand adhesive touted to glue any and all plastics, on his spliced serpentine belt. He reported it worked great.

Years ago when I got my Heavy Ten I had to cut the special belt that came with it in order to remove the headstock to send the bed to SB to grind it. On return the regluing the original belt needed special glue so having several serpentine belts from cars that I had replaced with new belts, I decided to try one. I cut the belt off square, drilled small holes in the grove bottoms and laced it together with small diameter stainless steel wire. Seems to work OK , but has a 1/8" gap due to streatching.While I have not used it too much because of health problems what I tried works OK.
If this fails or has other problems I will try the glued system.
Walt

I tried but did not find the Dr. Bonder
plastic adhesive (permatex) locally. Obviously
I will keep on searching for this.

However the cyanoacrylate gell glue (also
permatex) that I put on last night seems to
be holding up pretty well. I even chucked
up some steel and began taking some pretty
serious cuts on it, much faster stock removal
than the leather belt. Not quite a gear head
lathe but a good deal better.

It is apparent that these belts need a lot
less tension to deliver power than the leather
ones.

My next quandry: should I cut off the leather
one, or leave it on for now. At the moment it
is resting on the smallest step on top, and
pulled out of the way onto the shaft at the
extreme left at the bottom, so it is idling.

I could always put a new leather one on if need
be, I've got the belting and glue....

I had some time today ( that in its self is an oddity!) and cut up a bunch of belts we had sitting around. ground them down and glued them back together with everything we had in the shop. reports comming soon.

The ice storm here last night kept me home today, so with a little time on my hands I thought I would try to adapt an old serpentine belt to my 405. This was somewhat unplanned and I didn't have any suitable glue, but I have a Clipper Belt Lacer so I figured I could rig something up. As it turned out, I think it worked too well. When I started the motor, it jerked the countershaft pulley loose from its shaft. I re-tightened the allen screw and tried again, but the pulley came loose even before the late came up to speed. Is that allen screw all that holds the pulley in place? I'd have thought there would at least be a flat spot on the shaft to tighten the screw against.

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